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March 31, 2012 · By Star Parker · 0 Comments
What are the ramifications if the Supreme Court finds the individual mandate provision of the healthcare reform law unconstitutional? This provision requires individuals to purchase government-defined health insurance or pay a fine.
I hope it will serve as a wakeup call to a nation that I believe is still sleeping through a crisis.
Liberal and open-ended interpretation of the Constitution has rendered it practically meaningless, opening the door to steady growth of the federal government and its inexorable encroachment in our lives over the last half century. The problems we are having today all originate here.
Even if “Obamacare” is repealed, health care remains a major problem. Costs keep escalating because there is no real, functioning marketplace. Ninety percent of healthcare expenditures are made by third parties: government, employers, insurance companies. All due to direct or indirect government controls.
Our growing burden of taxes and government debt — what now is breaking European countries and is about to break us — stems from the growth of government programs, enabled by open-ended interpretation of the Constitution.
Our private economy, in which freedom and the creative spirit are still allowed to operate, is going great.
A miracle is taking place in energy, with new domestic production of oil and gas made possible by new drilling technologies.
Oil imports, as a percentage of our overall domestic oil consumption, have dropped almost 25 percent since 2005. In North Dakota, where much of this new oil production is happening, production has increased from 10,000 barrels a day in 2003 to 400,000 barrels a day.
Natural gas production has increased 26 percent since 2005, producing U.S. natural gas prices that are the lowest in the world. As a result, according to University of Michigan economist Mark J. Perry, firms that use natural gas — like chemical and fertilizer businesses — are actively talking about returning to the United States.
New technologies abound, with more and more gadgets appearing all the time at lower and lower prices.
Computer equipment that cost $1,000 in 1997 today would sell for about $65, Perry calculated.
So why are we turning over more and more of our lives to the most unproductive, least efficient part of our country: government?
Just over the last four years, government spending has increased to take 25 percent of the American economy from 20 percent.
The result is the most sluggish economic recovery since the Great Depression. It is a sign of the American people’s depressed spirit that an unemployment rate of 8.3 percent is actually viewed as good news. This is almost two and half points higher than the average unemployment rate in our country from 1948 to 2010.
But while we suffer, Washington parties.
The unemployment rate in the Washington, D.C. metropolitan area is 5.7 percent. The District’s 2.7 percent population growth last year was the highest in the nation, according to demographer Joel Kotkin.
He reports that the capital region’s economy expanded 14 percent since 2007. Over the last decade, 50,000 new jobs in the federal government bureaucracy were created, and local federal spending increased by 166 percent.
No wonder in a recent Gallup poll, residents of greater Washington, D.C., expressed the highest level of confidence in the U.S. economy among the nation’s largest metropolitan areas.
Isn’t it time to turn this around? Why are Americans still tolerating this?
If we are going to get the nation back on track, we’ve got to get our resources out of Washington and back into the private sector where they can be used creatively and productively. This is how to create jobs.
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IRS Axe Man Cometh
Forces antagonistic to religion dominate our courtrooms, our classrooms, and that most potent platform of public influence, the entertainment industry. Stridently ideological and convinced that the forces of reason and progress are on their side, these secular shapers of culture will not be satisfied until every last vestige of religious influence is exorcised from the public square. These individuals reject the fact that the Christian religion played an integral role in the shaping of America's political traditions and the spirit of liberty and equality that is unique among nations.
As Sherlock Holmes and Mr. Spock were always fond of noting, when attempting to unravel a whodunit, a useful postulate is: “When you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth.” Point in case is the targeting by multiple government departments and agencies at the federal and state level, by elected officials, and by Democrat Party organizations of Catherine Engelbrecht, founder of True the Vote, a non-profit organization dedicated to ensuring honest elections and ballot integrity by targeting voter fraud.
South Dakota state legislators Representatives Stace Nelson (R-Fulton), Manny Steele (R-Sioux Falls), “Chip” Campbell (R-Rapid City), Don Kopp (R-Rapid City), Liz May(R-Kyle), Lance Russell (R-Hot Springs), and Senators Tim Begalka (R-Clear Lake), and Phil Jensen (R-Rapid City), join together to express deep concerns and opposition to the wide spread amnesty for illegal aliens proposed in US Senate Bill 744 being considered by Congress.
We have not forgotten the 2007 McCain-Kennedy amnesty bill that was killed in the face of intense outrage from the American people. This administration has engaged in criminal conduct by granting amnesty through presidential edict to certain illegal aliens. If we were outraged back in 2007 at the McCain-Kennedy amnesty bill, we are now outraged to the hundredth power at the latest attempt by Congress to shove amnesty for illegal aliens down our throats.
South Dakota Gov. Dennis Daugaard announced today that he will appoint Vern Larson of Vivian as Commissioner of School and Public Lands. Last month, Commissioner Jarrod Johnson resigned from office, effective Aug. 15. The Governor’s appointment of Larson will be effective at the same time.
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"We don't intend to turn the Republican Party over to the traitors in the battle just ended. We will have no more of those candidates who are pledged to the same goals as our opposition and who seek our support. Turning the party over to the so-called moderates wouldn't make any sense at all." - Ronald Reagan, Nov. 10, 1964 |
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